# A theory I saw about how COVID may have escaped from the Wuhan lab **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [February 17, 2021, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082 "2021-02-17T03:49:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/342 "2021-10-10T13:45:43Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Remember, at the time, they were suggesting it might have originated outside of China. A few months later they were suggesting that, not at the initial newsworthy outbreak. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/343 "2021-10-10T14:29:29Z")
The timing of when they suggested that is concurrent with when they destroyed all the evidence they could, iirc. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/344 "2021-10-10T14:50:07Z")
yes it was. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/345 "2021-10-10T16:05:08Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > The virus has been sequenced, independently, by labs all around the world. There’s really no way for the Chinese government to suppress that information. I don’t understand your point. What does that have to do with the Wuhan Lab? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/346 "2021-10-10T18:45:16Z")
There are two possibilities if the virus was released from that lab. One is that one is the wild viruses they were studying got out. The other is that they modified a virus and the modified virus got out. The former seems pretty likely, especially since there seem to be reports of people exploring the caves from which they collected some of their samples getting sick. The latter is extremely unlikely, because if they modified it, that process would have left signs withing the viral genome that any of those other scientists who later sequenced it would have seen. I suppose there’s also a small chance that the virus naturally mutated after it was collected and before it escaped the lab. But that would require it to have been grown in a lot of animals in the lab. Or gotten incredibly lucky. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/347 "2021-10-10T19:33:20Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I suppose there’s also a small chance that the virus naturally mutated after it was collected and before it escaped the lab. But that would require it to have been grown in a lot of animals in the lab. Or gotten incredibly lucky. Aren’t viruses grown in bacterial cells? [Virus or phage cultures require host cells in which to multiply.](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-microbiology/chapter/culturing-viruses/) For bacteriophages, cultures are grown by infecting bacterial cells. The phage can then be isolated from the resulting plaques in a lawn of bacteria on a plate. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/348 "2021-10-10T19:39:24Z")
It depends on the virus. Bacteriophages are viruses adapted to live in bacteria. This is a virus that enters human cells via the ACE2 receptor. I don’t think it lives in bacteria at all. For reference, people who are allergic to eggs have trouble getting the flu vaccine because most of it is made by growing flu viruses in chicken eggs. I’m sure they would use a vat of bacteria instead if that were practical. I’m pretty sure they’d have needed an appropriate animal host, like a cat or a bat or a pangolin or a dog or a mink to grow out this virus. Or, more likely, a human cell culture. But you wouldn’t get a ton of reproductions that way. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/349 "2021-10-10T19:56:57Z")
[maybe you can translate this better](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0516_article). It sounds like petri dish technology. We isolated virus from nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal specimens from this patient and characterized the viral sequence, replication properties, and cell culture tropism. We found that the virus replicates to high titer in Vero-CCL81 cells and Vero E6 cells in the absence of trypsin. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/350 "2021-10-10T20:14:37Z")
quickly googling, > **[Vero cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vero_cell)** > > Vero cells are a lineage of cells used in cell cultures. The 'Vero' lineage was isolated from kidney epithelial cells extracted from an African green monkey (Chlorocebus sp.; formerly called Cercopithecus aethiops, this group of monkeys has been split into several different species). The lineage was developed on 27 March 1962 by Yasumura and Kawakita at the Chiba University in Chiba, Japan. The original cell line was named Vero after an abbreviation of verda reno, which means 'green kidne The V... The Vero cells are monkey kidney cells. They are also fairly pricey. So, not > [@puzzlegal](#): > > a human cell culture. but a monkey cell culture. I’m still not following your point. So they could have grown out some of these viruses. Do you think they grew them in the sort of massive quantities that would likely lead to a lot of mutations? What sort of quantities of cell cultures are you envisioning? I bet you get more viral replication and more changes of mutation growing in a single person or animal than in those petri dishes. ---
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2021, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/351 "2021-10-10T22:39:25Z")
I think you two are just flirting now… Gain-of-function research exists. The Wuhan lab might have been running experiments on GOF with coronaviruses. Covid-19 may have escaped from a lab. It might have jumped species. The point is that we should probably try to find out. That might help. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2021, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/352 "2021-10-11T03:16:07Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I’m still not following your point. So they could have grown out some of these viruses. Do you think they grew them in the sort of massive quantities that would likely lead to a lot of mutations? What sort of quantities of cell cultures are you envisioning? I bet you get more viral replication and more changes of mutation growing in a single person or animal than in those petri dishes. It would appear that if you’re in the business of locating viruses to modify them for study to learn how to defeat them then there is the potential for one of them to escape the lab. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2021, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/353 "2021-10-11T03:32:02Z")
Also, is the WIKI page on the Wuhan Lab in error when it says they engage in gain of function work? ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2021, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/354 "2021-10-11T04:08:37Z")
> [@EastUmpqua](#): > > Covid-19 may have escaped from a lab. It might have jumped species. The point is that we should probably try to find out. That might help. It may have escaped the lab but it probably didn’t escape the destruction of lab samples. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2021, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/355 "2021-10-11T13:51:46Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Also, is the WIKI page on the Wuhan Lab in error when it says they engage in gain of function work? Read the thread I linked for you. It is an explanation that differentiates a rescue of function vs gain of function. There was no gain of function. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/356 "2021-10-11T23:19:59Z")
> [@Tfletch1](#): > > If you are talking about the paragraph you copied from wikipedia, that’s not an appropriate cite. The actual citation is a study in which the spike protein of a bat virus is spliced into a SARS that is adapted to grow in mice. And the reason they use mice is? ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/357 "2021-10-12T02:20:41Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > And the reason they use mice is? Just because something can infect cells in tissue culture doesn’t mean they can infect a host. Obviously, they didn’t want to infect humans. However, laboratory mice are poor hosts for SARS. In order to study their viruses in vivo, they had to alter they can infect mice. By the way, please note that this was a study with a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV construct, not a SARS-CoV-2 construct. SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19. Oh, and that mouse-adapted construct was made by Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/358 "2021-10-12T04:09:34Z")
> [@Tfletch1](#): > > Just because something can infect cells in tissue culture doesn’t mean they can infect a host. Doesn’t mean it can’t infect a host either. > [@Tfletch1](#): > > Oh, and that mouse-adapted construct was made by Americans. So? what does that have to do with the work being done in Wuhan? ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/359 "2021-10-12T12:49:47Z")
Look, if you don’t understand what’s in the paper and what was discussed extensively in the other thread, you can ask honest questions. It’s not my field, but I understand enough of what they’re doing so that I can explain it to you. Otherwise, I’m no longer engaging with you. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/360 "2021-10-12T12:59:26Z")
> [@EastUmpqua](#): > > I think you two are just flirting now… Gain-of-function research exists. The Wuhan lab might have been running experiments on GOF with coronaviruses. Covid-19 may have escaped from a lab. It might have jumped species. The point is that we should probably try to find out. That might help. What sort of investigation do you favor? What evidence would persuade you that it didn’t come from a lab? Do you have any education or professional qualifications to assess that kind of evidence? What entity would you trust to say “it didn’t come from a lab?” ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082/361 "2021-10-12T16:08:35Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > What evidence would persuade you that it didn’t come from a lab? What would persuade you that enough evidence has been destroyed that we’re unlikely to ever know how it got from bats to people? And are you ever going to be explicit in distinguishing “wild virus accidentally released from lab” and “virus was modified in lab”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-theory-i-saw-about-how-covid-may-have-escaped-from-the-wuhan-lab/933082.md?page=19)